Unlike other forms of addictive behavior, such as gambling disorder and substance disorders, cybersex addiction is not an officially recognized disorder and therefore mental health professionals would not give a diagnosis to people who show the signs of this kind of addiction.

Research in the field is still emerging, but based on what’s known currently, it appears that women are in fact less likely to use cybersex than men, and when they do, they're more likely to join chat rooms than to view pornography.

Research also shows that women become more likely to prefer interactive cybersex as they get older.

In investigating this relatively unexplored area, University of Duisberg-Essen psychologist Christian Laier and a team of German researchers decided to study the nature of cybersex addiction in women and understand its predictors.

They began with a perspective known as the which proposes that people become addicted to cybersex because they both anticipate and then receive sexual satisfaction.Unlike people who don’t develop an addiction, those hooked on cybersex actually become aroused by sexual cues on the Internet.If you don’t become turned on by pornographic images on the Internet, you won’t become a cybersex addict.If you do, and you experience a set of other risk factors, you may.Laier and his team recruited 102 young heterosexual adult females from the community ranging from 18 to 29 years old.The researchers told participants ahead of time that they would be viewing explicit pornographic material of legal sexual practices.